


The UNIT Secretary

by duchessofthemoonbase



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Post-Episode: s09e12 Hell Bent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 06:46:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 17,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5775712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duchessofthemoonbase/pseuds/duchessofthemoonbase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara applies for a job at UNIT in the 1970s. She forgets to factor in her heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It’s about six months before Clara admits to herself that she misses responsibility. She misses routine. She can’t even recall the last time she set the alarm on her phone. Her life has been a whirlwind of fun ever since she first set her fingers on the Tardis controls. In the past week alone, the time-traveling space diner had taken her and Ashildr to a planet ruled by tiny warrior hedgehogs, ancient Babylon, and a space golf course that they may or may not have taken Ernest Hemingway to.

It’s beginning to feel like when the summer holidays stretch on too long when you’re a child, or when you’ve eaten too many sweets. The fun and adventure loses its appeal when it’s the only thing you know.

“I’m going to get a job.” Clara announces to Ashildr over breakfast at a 32nd century Waffle House in what was left of Florida. “I feel like I’ve been having too much fun.”

Ashildr raises an eyebrow dismissively. “Seriously? We’re the last people in the universe who need a job, Clara. You’d be bored of it within an hour.”

“No.” Clara says defensively. “We have a time machine. I can take month long vacations in between every day of work if I feel like it. It’ll be good for me.”

Ashildr shrugs. “If you say so. But don’t blame me if you hate it.”

 

***

 

She could have picked anything, but this is what was calling to her, this was the thought that wouldn’t stop nagging at the back of her mind.

She knows what a bad idea it is.

Clara scrambles through the new and steadily growing wardrobe of the Tardis until she finds a matching pink skirt and blazer that should be fitting for the time period. She does her makeup accordingly, swiping on peach lipstick, and steps into a pair of sensible brown heels. She has the newspaper in her hands; she’s checked the date. There’s an opening for a secretary at UNIT HQ.

After breakfast, Clara drops Ashildr off at the Battle of Waterloo for god knows what, and then parks the Tardis in England, 1972. She positions it in some nearby woods where she hopes it won’t be noticed, and takes a deep breath of the fresh air, smiling. She realizes with a bit of regret that it’s been ages since she’s been on earth anywhere close to when she had lived there. She wonders if she’s forgetting who she is. She makes her way to the building on the other side of the clearing, walking confidently through the door.

“Hello,” she says sweetly to the man standing near the entrance. “I’m here to see Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart?”

Clara is then led into a tiny interview room and told to wait. She hopes she can calm herself down. To be honest, she’s a bit too excited for her own good. The room only contains a desk, a typewriter and a computer the size of a wardrobe. It really is 1972. She feels like she’s been thrown into the middle of an episode of _Mad Men_.

She hears the door creak open behind her and attempts to hold in her smile, but she can’t. It’s _him_. The Brigadier. The famous mustachioed hero of so many of the Doctor’s stories. The noble man with nerves of steel and a perennial twinkle in his eye. Kate’s father. The man who would one day be a part of Danny Pink’s army of Cybermen. He sits down behind the desk and examines her carefully.

“I presume you are here to apply for the secretary position, Miss…” The Brigadier looks at her questioningly.

“Morland.” Clara says, suddenly remembering that using her real name is probably not the wisest of ideas. “Catherine Morland.” She says a tiny prayer that he’s never read Jane Austen.

The Brigadier shakes her hand and she blushes a bit. He’s even more handsome than his pictures.

“Well Ms. Morland, your record seems to prove that you’re up for the job. Teacher at Coal Hill in London, you say?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You ever know a bloke named Chesterton?”

“No, sir.”

The Brigadier suddenly looked at Clara a bit more seriously. “Ms. Morland, I take it you’re a woman of high intelligence and understanding.”

Clara smirked. “I’d like to think so, Brigadier.”

He sighed and drummed his fingernails on the desk. “Well you should know that this wouldn’t be a typical secretary job. Here at UNIT we deal with the odd, the unexplained. Anything on earth, or even beyond.”

Clara shrugged. “Okay. I take it I start tomorrow?”

“ _Okay_?” The Brigadier asked. “Is that really all you have to say?”

“I’m sorry?”

“I just told you that we deal with alien threats and you’re acting like I just told you that the coffeemaker is down the hall.”

Clara shifted in her seat. “Oh! Yes, aliens, of course. I mean that’s…pretty scary. I mean, _aliens,_ who knew, right?”

The Brigadier looked at her suspiciously. “Well alright. I apologize, Ms. Morland. I see I’ve underestimated the scope of your experience. The last woman I interviewed did not take this news so casually.”

“Oh I’m not taking it casually.” Clara said. “I’m actually very scared. I mean, not scared… still very capable, but um…pleasantly surprised. Yes, that’s it.”

“Very well, Ms. Morland.” The Brigadier said. “The job is yours. You start tomorrow.”

Clara beamed. “Thank you Brigadier. I’ll be here tomorrow, eight sharp.”

“Good day, Ms. Morland.”

She walked out and closed the door behind her, leaning against the wall. She exhaled with relief. She had gotten the job. This would be fun.

Clara began to walk through the hallways of the building, smiling to herself until she saw a flash of green velvet disappear behind a door. _Of course._

It’s not like she’s kidding herself or anything. Isn’t this why she wanted to do this? To learn more about the man she lost, to see a piece of his history alive? The man whose name she would still probably never know. Always insistent on being such a mystery. She was planning to stay out of the way, to hide behind her typewriter, and merely hear stories from her coworkers about that funny scientific advisor who showed up sometimes. Do nothing to change any timelines and stay out of the way.

_He was just behind that door._

Clara rushed out of the building.

_How am I going to do this without breaking my heart all over again?_


	2. Chapter 2

After a short interlude, which involved two days worth of sorting out some legal matters with the Drahvin and the Megara, Clara returned to 1972 for her first day of work. She parked the diner in the nearby woods, chose a selection from her newly purchased 1970s wardrobe, and rushed out the door. Today was the day.

Halfway through her walk out of the woods to UNIT HQ it started raining buckets. _Brilliant._ She’d look a complete mess on her first day. She took it the Brigadier wouldn’t approve of such conduct.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered!” said a small voice in the distance, and Clara turned around to see a small blonde woman running towards her with a blue and white polka-dotted umbrella.

“There we are,” she said, pulling Clara under the umbrella with her. “This rain is an atrocity, I tell you, and these boots are as good as ruined.” She pointed at a pair of white go-go boots that matched a sky-blue blazer and brown skirt. It was the kind of outfit that would have never passed in Clara’s time, but the woman was so positively adorable in her mannerisms that Clara thought she could make any outfit work, no matter how ridiculous.

“I’m Jo,” she said, beaming and stretching out her hand. “Jo Grant.”

“I’m Cl-Catherine. Catherine Morland. I’m the new secretary.”

“Excellent! Pleasure to meet you Catherine. I’m sure we’ll be great friends.”

Clara smiled back at her. The Doctor had talked about Jo before. She was even more delightful than he had described, emanating sunshine in her every step, even as she rushed through the dark morning rainstorm. Clara remembered the Doctor mentioning her when she was dating Danny, talking about how she had run off and married a scientist, breaking both of his hearts. She remembered the guilt that racked through her chest when he told the story.

“So what do you do here?” Clara asked, making polite conversation, even though she already knew the answer.

“I’m the assistant to the scientific advisor,” Jo said. “The Doctor.” She beamed a little brighter, then.

“That must be interesting.” Clara said, with a knowing gleam in her eye.

Jo smiled. “You haven’t the slightest idea.”

Clara smiled back.  _You haven't, either._

The two girls huddled in through the door, relieved to finally be out of the rain.

“Ms. Grant!” said a voice from down the hall, “Who’s your friend?” Clara smiled as she was approached by two men in uniform, both holding cups of steaming coffee.

“This is Ms. Catherine Morland,” Jo said. “Catherine, this is Sergeant John Benton and Captain Mike Yates.”

“How do you do,” Captain Yates said, shaking her hand, immediately followed by Benton.

“Nice to meet you,” Clara said. She had remembered the Doctor mentioning them, something about Benton’s coffee and some story about Yates playing the harmonica for some Silurians. She liked them instantly. They seemed the handsome and dependable type. _Like Danny,_ she thought.

“We’ll see you around, Ms. Morland.” Benton said, smiling at her, and then he and Captain Yates went through the door.

Jo immediately pressed her ear to it.

“What are you doing?” Clara whispered.

“Shh…” Jo held a finger up.

Two minutes later, Jo removed her ear from the door and laughed. “Figures, those buffoons. They’re talking about how pretty you are.”

Clara blushed and giggled. “Really?”

“Quite so. They have a bet on today’s football match and the winner gets to give you a tour of the place.”

Clara and Jo giggled as they walked down the hall. Clara was grateful that Jo was the first person she ran into here. She felt immediately welcome.

“I better go find the Brigadier, he’ll be waiting.” Clara said.

“Oh, yes! Of course. See you around, Catherine!”

Clara strutted down the hallway confidently into the Brigadier’s office.

“Good morning Brigadier.”

“Ah, Ms. Morland,” he said. “Ready for your first day?”

“I believe so,” Clara said. “Jo was just introducing me to everyone.”

“That’s Jo alright. Let me show you where you’ll be working.”

The Brigadier led her down the hallway into a tiny office with a typewriter, a telephone, and some filing cabinets.

“The work’s quite simple, really,” The Brigadier said. “Answer the phone, type up these notes, and file these papers, if you have extra time. Let me know if you have any questions.”

“Yes, sir,” Clara said, sitting down. She sighed as he closed the door behind him.

Clara slipped on a tiny silver bracelet that Ashildr had specially engineered for her, a gift before her first day on the job. Tiny nanobots ran down her fingers and analyzed the papers she’d have to type, then took over the muscles in her hands, giving her perfect typing skills and letting her sit back and daydream while her fingers did the work. Ashildr finally agreed to support Clara’s aspiration to get a job, but there was no way she would let Clara suffer through learning to use “one of those bloody typewriter contraptions.” This was of course, followed by a story about Ashildr getting severe blisters after typing up pamphlets for some suffragettes in 1911.

Clara leaned back in her chair and watched her fingers punch across the typewriter, scanning her eyes over some notes someone had taken about the prices of scientific equipment. Clara began to feel herself drifting off into sleep, and decided to venture outside, thinking she could flirt with Benton or Yates and get them to make her some fresh coffee.

Clara walked out into the hallway, looking into the windows of the room across the hall, which was littered with all sorts of test tubes and beakers. _Was this where…_

Clara took a few steps into the room, and then she saw it, sitting in the corner.

_The Tardis._

Clara smiled, feeling her eyes water up just at the sight of it.

She walked over, examining the different paint job and smiling at the sign on the door. She placed her hand on it gently, and rested her cheek against the wood.

“Hello, old friend,” Clara whispered, and felt the ship hum a vibration back at her, like it was replying, and she smiled. The Tardis must know her, even if she was so far in the Doctor's future at this point.

Clara stepped away and took a deep breath, giving the ship a bittersweet smile.

_I've missed you._

Clara ducked out of the room and back into the office, trying to collect herself, trying to push her feelings down where they couldn’t touch her.

_Stop being ridiculous, Clara, you knew this would happen. What on earth were you expecting?_

Five minutes and a freshening of mascara later, she was ready to flirt some coffee out of Captain Yates.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I haven't updated this in forever, I've been busy and was unsure of where I wanted to take it. But I've got it all plotted out now so you should be getting more regular updates now. :)

Ashildr was locked up in her study, half asleep and rereading an old diary from the 37th century out of pure boredom, when she heard the unmistakable ring of the diner doorbell echo through the Tardis.

It was rather strange, considering they were parked in the middle of the forest near UNIT HQ. It didn’t seem the sort of place people would wander into for a burger…a stray hiker, perhaps.

Most of the time Ashildr couldn’t be bothered with the strangers that often wandered into their door, that was usually Clara’s hobby, but curiosity implored her to put on Clara’s blue apron uniform and take a look.

When Ashildr arrived at the counter, she found a serious looking man with dark hair and a goatee, dressed handsomely in a black Nehru jacket. His hands were folded neatly in front of him as if he were about to give orders to a room full of people as opposed to a waitress, and the way he was staring out at the space just in front of him made her feel uneasy.

“Hello,” Ashildr said, placing herself in front of the stranger to disrupt him from his stupor. “What can I get for you today?”

The man slowly peeled off a pair of gloves and began to skim the menu. He certainly wasn’t dressed like a hiker. “Hmmm. Let’s see then. Just some black coffee and a piece of buttered toast, if you please.”

“Very well,” Ashildr said, and turned behind her to turn on the coffee machine.

“This isn’t the most lucrative location for a diner, wouldn’t you think?”

Ashildr froze and turned around, startled by the snarky look in the stranger’s eyes.

“I guess not, but it wasn’t my decision.”

“I see,” the man said. Ashildr began to spread butter on the piece of toast, feeling his eyes looming on the back of her head.

“And how long have you been working here?”

“Oh, half a year, maybe.” Ashildr was already growing tired of the man’s questioning, and was already planning a new argument to convince Clara that they should keep the diner door locked.

The man took a delicate sip of coffee and sighed. “May I inquire on who the owners of this establishment are? They must be strange fellows, putting a diner all the way out here.”

“They like to keep to themselves,” Ashildr said. “I don’t think they’d like it very much if I told you their names.”

Well, she wasn’t lying.

“Hm.” The man said, finishing his last bite of toast. “That’s a lovely poster you have up there. The _Star Wars_ one.”

“Thanks.” Ashildr said bluntly. The man smiled at her in a disturbingly giddy way.

“Fabulous film,” he said. “Highest grossing one of 1977, did you know?”

“No,” Ashildr said, pretending to mop up the nearby tables.

 _Oh shit_ , she suddenly thought. _What year had Clara parked them? 1972? 1973? It was definitely before 1977._

The man stood up and began to put his gloves back on. “That was excellent coffee, thank you. I’ll be back soon. Goodbye.”

He walked out of the room in a manner that was almost too calm and too stately to be believable. But he was gone. _Thank god._ She’d have to tell Clara about this incident. It was too suspicious, too dangerous.

Ashildr strolled back over to the counter to pick up the pile of coins he’d left, a very generous tip, when she noticed he’d scribbled something on the receipt, in perfect, elegant script:

_Nice Tardis._

***

The Master couldn’t believe he had once been proud of the Autons he had used last time.

But _these_. These were _so_ much better.

He walked around the empty warehouse, inspecting his work, making sure every detail was made correct. These were no gangly shop mannequins. These replicas were exact, down to the very last detail: the trim of the Brigadier’s mustache, the blue of Jo’s eyeshadow. No one would know the difference.

There was of course, the problem of the blood samples.

Until he had obtained blood samples from the staff at UNIT HQ, these Autons would just walk around like wordless robots. They’d be noticed. But if he could extract blood from each of the staff and have his computers scan and analyze it, he could program them to walk around like themselves, and no one would know the difference.

When the Autons were complete, they’d enter UNIT headquarters, murder the originals, and start wreaking havoc. Declaring war on every country, sending bombs and missiles anywhere they could. And then in a world filled with war and chaos, he could easily rise up as their leader. The world would be his.

There were easier ways to achieve world domination, of course, but there was a special satisfaction in getting the see the world blame UNIT and the Doctor’s oh-so-precious Britain for the war that would ensue. He would revel in it.

But there was still the problem of obtaining the blood samples. He couldn’t get close enough to obtain them. He’d have to send someone else in, he supposed. He could always find some poor brute to hypnotize, surely.

And then there was that diner. The diner that anyone from his planet would immediately know was not simply just a diner.

So whose Tardis was it? Was it the girl who served him coffee? Someone else?

Either way, he knew he needed get this Timelord to align with him before he ran into the Doctor.

Whatever it took.


	4. Chapter 4

How many glasses of champagne had Clara had by now? 2? 3? A lot? She wasn’t exactly sure. She was finding out, however, that these end-of-the-month staff parties at UNIT HQ were as fun as Jo said they would be.

She felt pretty, so pretty, in the way you only can when you’re a bit too drunk. Clara was wearing a revealing light pink party dress and brown heels, and she couldn’t stop laughing and reveling in the attention that Benton, Yates, and, goodness, did the Brigadier just stare at her ass? Even him.

The dress was long and flowy in a way that you could only get away with in the seventies, and the rustle of her sleeves and skirt made her want to keep dancing all night. She was tossed from Jo to Yates to Benton and back again, until she was exhausted, and plopped down on the couch next to Jo and a pot of steaming cheese fondue.

“Oh, yum, I’m starving,” Jo said, stabbing a piece of chicken. Benton piled 7 pieces of steak onto his fondue fork, and Clara laughed.

“Anyone up for checkers?” Yates said, and Benton readily agreed and began to pull out the board.

“Oh boy,” Jo whispered to Clara. “They do this every month, get totally pissed and then attempt to play checkers. They’ve never finished a game.”

The girls giggled together as Yates began to sloppily set up the board. Clara was happy with how quickly she had bonded with Jo since she had started her job. She guessed Jo appreciated having another girl around the place.

Benton laughed. “Check…mate?”

“We haven’t even started yet.”

“Oh.” The two men started giggling.

“Yates, you’re red, I’m black. You just moved _my_ piece.”

“But I thought…hm. I’m sleepy.”

Clara laughed at her new friends, feeling more at peace with herself than she had been in a long time. This was fun. Good old fashioned, normal fun. Just drinks with coworkers, nothing involving Tudor monarchs or spaceships. It was safe, pleasant, and relaxing in a way life hadn’t been for so long.

“You’re very pretty Catherine…so pretty,” Benton said drunkenly. “I’d ask you out for a drink, if Yates wasn’t so keen on you also.”

“I am not!” Yates said, dipping a piece of broccoli into the fondue pot with his fingers.

“No matter,” Benton said. “Some other chap is going to steal you right out from under us, isn’t that right Catherine?”

Clara shrugged.

“Like who?” Jo asked, laughing.

Benton looked over at the Brigadier and giggled. “He was staring at her bum earlier.”

Jo slapped him on the arm. “For god’s sake, be appropriate or you’ll get us all fired.”

“So who else is left to snatch up Catherine?” Yates asked.

“Excuse you, I’m not being snatched up by anyone, thank you.” Clara said.

“The Doctor!” Yates said, and he and Benton burst out laughing. Clara could already feel herself blush.

“Ohmygoodness, Catherine, you still haven’t met the Doctor yet, have you?” Jo said.

Clara shrugged. “I…I guess not.”

“Nah,” Yates said, smirking at her naughtily. “You’re not into older men, are you Catherine? Got a thing for silver foxes?”

Clara nearly spit out her champagne. “Oh, no, not me.”

_Liar._

The chess game crawled on as she and Jo finished the last of the fondue, when the door opened, and there he was.

The Doctor, in all his red velvet pompous splendor, the same as always.

He wasn’t even looking in their direction yet, he had gone right to discussing something with the Brigadier, and so Clara took the opportunity to slip out.

“Oh come on, Catherine!” Jo said, noticing her leaving. “We’re not even at the part where they throw the checkers pieces at the back of the Brig’s head yet! It’s brilliant!”

“Sorry, I’ve got…um, a thing. I’ll see you on Monday.” Clara waved at Jo and made her way out the door as quickly as possible, rushing down the stark white hallway in her high heels.

There was another pair of footsteps behind her, echoing down the hallway, and she tried to speed up.

“Stop!” a booming voice said, and Clara knew it was him.

She froze on the spot. What should she do? Run for it? Run back to her Tardis and never return?

Or turn around. Turn around and talk to the Doctor, her best friend, once again.

Clara slowly inched her head around, her breath catching in her throat as they met eyes. It was _him_. I mean, it wasn’t, but in a way, it was so, unmistakably _him._

“You’ve been avoiding me, haven’t you?”

“No,” Clara said, nearly stuttering. “Why would you think that?”

The Doctor looked her in the eyes in an almost accusatory manner. “Every time I enter a room you’re very quick to leave.”

Clara froze, unsure of what excuse to make.

“I’m sorry,” the Doctor said. “That was terribly rude of me, wasn’t it? Let me just introduce myself.” He held out his hand, and Clara grasped it reluctantly, as if it were a live wire. “I’m the Doctor, and you must be the Catherine Morland I’ve been hearing so much about.”

Clara teetered on her heels nervously, afraid to look him in the eyes again. “Yup, that’s me.”

“Well, you are very strange, Ms. Morland, but at least I know you’re not a spy.”

Clara took a step back. “Sorry?”

“A spy would be cleverer than to chose a pseudonym from a Jane Austen novel, no?”

Clara blushed madly. “Excuse me?”

“Well, don’t try to deny it. I’ll keep mum. I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’m sure it’s not nefarious in any way, so I’ll let you get on with it.”

“Uh, thanks.” Clara said, too drunk to try and lie her way out, but sober enough to be offended.

“But in return, Ms. Morland,” the Doctor said, with a smirk on his lips that was reminiscent of the twelfth incarnation Clara had loved so deeply, “I expect that, one day, you’ll tell me who you really are.”

Clara smiled. “We’ll see, Doctor.” The name felt so warm and familiar on her lips. She missed saying it. _Saying it to him._

“Good night, Ms. Morland,” the Doctor said, and he turned around, and was gone.

 

 ***

 

Clara returned home to the diner, too drunk with exhaustion and emotion to hear Ashildr’s story, something about some man stopping in for toast. She went straight to bed.

In the morning, Clara woke up with a nasty hangover, and halfway to the kitchen she remembered. She had met the Doctor, shook his hand, tried not to cry of…of what emotion, she couldn’t tell you.

And so Clara stumbles back into bed and sleeps all afternoon, trying to forget, but wanting to remember.

 

***

 

When the Doctor walks back into the party room, Yates, Benton, and the Brigadier have already left, and only Jo remains, sitting on the sofa having a cup of coffee.

“Where did you go off to?” Jo asked.

“Oh,” the Doctor said. “I was just introducing myself to Catherine.”

“She’s fantastic, isn’t she Doctor?”

The Doctor sat down next to her and sighed.

“What is it?” Jo asked.

“That’s the thing,” the Doctor said. “I’m not exactly sure. It’s just…Ms. Morland…she…”

“She…what?”

The Doctor clasped his hands together and sighed in the way he always did before pondering a complex scientific problem. “I look into her eyes and I get this feeling like I know her from somewhere.”

Jo giggled. “Oh, like soulmates or something?”

“Oh please Jo, don’t be ridiculous.”

“Well, I’m just saying, that’s what it sounds like,” Jo smirked.

The Doctor finished his last sip of coffee and stood up. “Let’s get home. The champagne is making fairytale nonsense go to your head, my dear.”

“Oh Doctor,” Jo said. “One day you’ll be smack in the middle of one, and you won’t even know it.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for all the lovely comments! They're so lovely to wake up to in the morning and keep me writing. :) <3

Clara rolled over and stared at her phone with disgust. How was it 5 pm? Had she really slept all day?

“Morning, sleepyhead,” Ashildr said, gently knocking on the door, and then strolling in with a traditional English breakfast and a cup of coffee.

“Aw, Ashildr, you didn’t have to do this,” said Clara.

“Well,” Ashildr said. “When you have a Tardis with a 3D food printer it really doesn’t take the effort you would imagine.”

“Yeah, but still,” Clara said, smiling and taking a large gulp of the coffee, desperate for the caffeine to kick in.

“You met him last night, didn’t you?”

Clara simply groaned and leaned back against the pillows.

Ashildr sighed and gave Clara a maternal and authoritative look that highlighted her true age. “Clara, you know how dangerous this is, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“He’s met you, Clara. He’s seen your face. This is going to change everything. When he meets you all those years later, you won’t be the impossible girl anymore. You’ll be that girl he met at UNIT. You could erase everything you had. You’re playing with fire.”

Clara sat silent.

“And it’s not just about you two either. Think of all the history the two of you changed together. It might all be different now!”

“I don’t think I care,” said Clara, a bit too quickly to make Ashildr comfortable.

Ashildr shook her head dismissively. “It doesn’t _work_ like that Clara.”

Clara sunk her head down on the pillow and stared up at the ceiling. “I can’t live without him anymore. I’ve been trying, I’ve been trying so hard, but I can’t.”

“Clara…”

“I like what I’m doing right now! I like UNIT, I like having normal, human friends, and I like getting up to go there every morning. I like sitting in front of that typewriter and smiling because I know that he’s somewhere down the hall, that there’s a big blue box parked in the corner, that there’s…”

“Oh for god’s sake Clara, would you just _shut up_.”

Clara sat up. “Excuse me?”

“You’re being childish. Selfish. You’re not thinking straight,” Ashildr said.

Clara gasped, sitting up suddenly. “Not like you would understand! Do you know how broken I was after we materialized away from him that day? How I had to turn around and know I’d probably never see that man again? That he’d never know who I was? That I loved him?”

Ashildr got up off the bed and leaned her head against the wall, closing her eyes and sighing. “Don’t tell me I’ve never felt like that, Clara.”

“I’m sorry, I…”

“The first man I married, I loved him more than the world itself. And one day I had to leave. He was getting too old, and I was staying too young. I packed up and left. I don’t remember nearly anything from that far back, but I can remember that. His face as I waved goodbye, his smile. I told him I was going to the market. He didn’t know I wasn’t coming back.”

Clara looked down. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for, I’m just, I’m just so…”

“I’m sorry too,” Ashildr said, coming over to hold Clara as she tried not to cry. “I just really need you to be careful, Clara. Especially since…”

“Especially since what?”

“Well,” Ashildr started. “I tried to tell you last night, but you were still a bit too drunk. A man came into the diner yesterday. He kept asking questions about the diner, why we put it here, who owned it, that sort of thing. He pointed out the Star Wars poster. And he left this.” Ashildr handed over the receipt.

Clara shuddered. “ _Nice Tardis_? What did he look like? Was it the Doctor?”

“Not any incarnation I’ve seen pictures of before. But I printed his picture from the security cameras. See if you recognize him.” Ashildr handed over the picture she had printed, showing the man peeling off his gloves and grimacing.

“Oh dear,” Clara said.

“So…who is it?”

“Well, you know Missy, right?”

“Oh dear indeed,” Ashildr said, raising her eyebrows.

“This is an early incarnation. The Master,” Clara said, shaking her head. “He knows we’re here.”

“Well at least he doesn’t know who we are,” Ashildr said.

“Not yet,” Clara said worriedly.

“I’m going to leave you to finish your breakfast,” Ashildr said. “Just remember my advice, Clara. Don’t get too involved. Turn in your resignation. This isn’t safe anymore.”

“Alright,” Clara said. “Thanks.”

Of course she wasn’t going to listen.

Since when had she liked safe, anyways?

 

***

 

Clara put on a green and brown plaid dress and a pair of loafers and began to make her way out the door, grabbing some leftover fries off one of the diner tables as she hurried off.

“Wrap it up, Clara, okay?” Ashildr said, glaring at her expectantly. “Don’t make this something you’ll regret.”

“Yeah, I’ll work on it,” Clara said cheerfully, hardly listening.

Ashildr locked the door of the diner behind her and flipped the sign to ‘closed.’ She had encountered Missy enough to know what the Master was capable of, and she wasn’t going to take any more chances.

Clara strolled through the woods, which were still damp from rain the previous evening. She hated how right Ashildr was sometimes. This _was_ dangerous, too much of a risk. She was still addicted to the thrill of a narrow escape, no matter how much she denied it.

And look where that landed her last time.

As Clara exited the woods into the car park, she noticed Jo getting out of her car, wearing something fluffy and bright green that reminded her of the carpet at her Gran’s house. She was full of her usual cheer.

“Catherine!” Jo said, rushing up and hugging her. “Excellent news!”

“What?”

“Well, according to the Brig, you’re going to be working with us today! Isn’t that grand? You’ll have some people to talk to, instead of being stuck in that closet of an office of yours filing away papers.”

“Us?” Clara asked nervously.

“The Doctor and I, of course. We need some extra hands for an experiment he’s working on, and I figured you wouldn’t mind a change of pace. All you’ll have to do is hold some test tubes or something like that.” Jo said.

Clara swallowed. “Brilliant.”

Jo led Clara back to the science lab and began cleaning up so they would be able to start work. The Doctor would probably show up any minute, and Clara couldn’t tell if she was more excited or terrified.

Also, she was getting that strange sense she used to get, back when she traveled with her bow tie wearing Doctor, that the Tardis was staring at her from the corner of the room, watching her.

“Ah, good morning Jo, Ms. Morland.” The Doctor said, barging in suddenly. “I brought some coffee.”

“Good morning,” Clara whispered, looking down at the table.

“It’s nice of you to help us out today, Ms. Morland,” the Doctor said, rather matter-of-factly. “Today we’ll be analyzing some compounds we found in the caves that were inhabited by the Silur-well, some caves,” he said, smiling at Jo knowingly in a way that made Clara a bit angry.

 _Oh stop it,_ Clara thought. _I’ve had tea with Madam Vastra countless times, I know about the Silurians, you bloody, pompous, insufferable idiot._

The Doctor began putting drops of a bright red substance into various test tubes. “It’s vital that we put the chemicals we’re testing in at the exact same time, so we’ll need multiple sets of hands. Now Jo, you take the three tubes on the left, and then…”

Clara was drifting off already, too distracted to listen to the instructions. She kept sneaking looks at him, trying to see through the layers, trying to find traces of the Doctor she knew. And she was finding them. Everywhere.

But the one thing that stood out the most about this Doctor is that he hardly noticed she was there.

“Let’s have this coffee while we wait for the Bunsen burners to heat up, shall we?” the Doctor decided.

Clara gently accepted the mug of coffee from him, meeting his eyes for a second, watching him look right through her as if she were a ghost.

The taste of the coffee on her lips brought her back to a moment that was so much like this one. She had been fresh from Victorian London, the noise of traffic on the Glasgow sidewalk, the overcast sky matching the Doctor’s new grey hair.

_Please, just see me._

The Doctor began handing Clara sheets of paper to take down the results of the test, treating her like any other lab assistant who was coming in for temporary help.

_Do you have any idea what that’s like?_

“Are you alright Catherine?” Jo asked. “You look a little down.”

“Oh,” Clara said. “It’s just the weather.”

The Doctor chuckled. “It’s England, you should really be used to it by now.”

She could slap him, sometimes. A few times, she had.

The Doctor continued relaying the instructions to her and Jo, and Clara was too angry at his manner towards her to listen. Too frustrated. She didn’t know what she had expected from him. To him she was only a stranger.

Not a woman he’d go to hell and back just to see again.

“Alright, let’s begin,” the Doctor said, and Clara watched as Jo began to pour a beaker of a clear substance into her test tubes. Clara grabbed a similar looking beaker and began to do the same.

Suddenly, her second test tube bubbled up frantically, spraying Clara’s hand with the now purplish liquid. She cried out suddenly and jumped back.

“Ow! Ow! Owwww… _oh god_.” Clara shrieked, feeling the acid begin to burn through her hand and wincing through the pain. “I’m sorry, that was so stupid of me, I just-”

“Jo, fetch the medical kit,” the Doctor said, as he began to rinse off Clara’s burn under the sink, and she shuddered at the cool water running over her now scarlet red hand.

“That’s a nasty burn, isn’t it?” Jo said, examining it. “You’re lucky it was only your hand.”

“Don’t worry,” the Doctor said, getting a tube of something and a bandage from the kit. “I’ll fix you right up, Ms. Morland.”

“I’ll be right back!” Jo shouted from down the hall. “I’m just getting the mop to clean up the spill.”

“Very well,” the Doctor said, and he began to squeeze the tube of some sort of ointment or cream onto Clara’s hand. He started to gently massage it into the damaged skin with his fingertips, and Clara shuddered at his touch.

“Why are you being so nice to me? Fixing me up?” Clara asked. “I wasn’t paying attention, I made a stupid mistake, I messed the whole experiment up.”

The Doctor only smiled as he finished gingerly wrapping Clara’s hand in a bandage.

“Well, at least for today, Ms. Morland, you’re my assistant. And that means…”

“Means what?”

The Doctor smiled at her with kind eyes.

“It means I have a duty of care.”

Clara froze, caught up in the warm way he was smiling at her.

“Excuse me.” Clara said, rushing out of the room. “I have to go.”

“Ms. Morland?”

As soon as Clara was out the door she ran across the hall to her office, shutting the door behind her, sinking down on the floor and bursting into tears. _Ashildr’s right, I’m an idiot, I’m an absolute idiot._

Did she like the pain? She began to wonder. Did she need an outlet for these emotions? She certainly wasn’t getting one running about with Ashildr; never talking about it because they both knew it was too painful. Maybe feeling her heartbreak was better than feeling nothing at all. Better than ignoring the fact that she had once had a love so strong it nearly tore apart time and space itself.

She liked having feelings for him again.

Clara wiped her cheeks and stood up, pacing around the tiny office and trying to pull herself together. “He’s not _your_ Doctor,” Clara said to herself. “You need to leave, you’re putting everything you love in danger.”

She suddenly had a flashback of a heavy beaded dress on her shoulders and the Doctor staring at her over the console…

_You don’t know if something’s an addiction, until you try to give it up…_

“Stop it, stop it!” she said, kicking the desk. “This Doctor doesn’t love you, he barely even knows you, you can’t keep hanging around here and expecting some sort of…”

Clara stopped suddenly when she noticed a flash of bright green in the doorway. Jo.

“Catherine?” Jo said. “Are you alright? The Doctor said you ran out all of a sudden, I just wanted to check if you were alright.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m…I’m fine.” Clara said, still pacing around in circles.

“If it makes you feel better,” Jo said, “I messed up an experiment of the Doctor’s once too, and I wish he had been as kind to me as he was to you.”

“What did he do?”

Jo laughed. “He called me a ‘ham-fisted bun vendor**’.”

“Wow, are you serious? What does that even mean?”

Jo giggled, and Clara couldn’t help but smile along. “Don’t ask me,” Jo said. “It’s probably just some nonsense from Gallifr-”

Jo froze suddenly in terror. “Oh, I mean, I meant, um…”

“It’s okay,” Clara said. “I know about Gallifrey. I’ve been there.”

“You’ve…what?”

Clara wiped the last of the tears off her cheek and walked up to Jo, holding on to both of her hands. “Jo, can you keep a secret for me?”

Jo looked at her, concerned. “Of course, Catherine, anything. What’s wrong?”

“Well,” Clara said, smiling. “First of all, my name’s not really Catherine. It’s Clara Oswald. Second, we’re taking the rest of the day off work.”

“Why?” Jo asked.

Clara smiled. “Because I have a hell of a story I need to tell you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **In case you haven't seen Terror of the Autons...I'm not making this shit up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNy2rFflO_E


	6. Chapter 6

Every table and chair is empty, but somehow Clara and Jo ended up here, sitting on the floor behind the counter, resting up against boxes of glass Coca-Cola bottles and bags of flour, staring up at the ceiling fans spinning lazily over the empty diner.

“That’s the lifespan of the earth so far, you know,” Jo says, resting her head up against a bag of potatoes. “4.5 billion years. You and me, humanity itself, _life_ even, down to the tiniest little one-celled organisms, is such a tiny little sliver of time.”

“I guess we’re just too small to think about things like that,” Clara said sadly, playing with the hem of her skirt.

“Well, both of us are hardly over five feet tall, so I’d say so,” Jo laughed, and Clara couldn’t help but smile along with her.

Clara rested her head on Jo’s shoulder and sighed. “I’m glad I told you Jo,” she said. “I’m not quite sure what to do with myself anymore.”

“Me either,” Jo said. “Usually when girlfriends come to me with problems, I can find the answer in a magazine.”

Clara laughed. “Magazines on Gallifrey, maybe.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Jo said. “Can I see a picture of him?”

Clara grabbed Jo’s hand and pulled her up, smiling. “Yeah, come on.”

Clara led Jo through the back door of the diner into the console room, and Jo gasped.

“That has to be amazing,” Jo said, spinning around the console. “Two girls off traveling wherever they want. It’s perfect.”

“Yeah,” Clara said, crossing her arms and nodding happily. “I suppose most of the time, it really is.”

“I like the exterior better too. The diner, I mean. You can’t get food from a police telephone box, can you?”

Clara smirked. “Nope.”

They turned down the hallway and Clara showed her into her new living room, which was decorated with all her old things from her flat in London, giving her some of the familiar comfort of her old home. She pointed Jo to the middle bookshelf, which held a collection of framed pictures.

Jo’s eyes immediately turned to a framed black and white photograph that Clara had taken, a side profile of the Doctor while he was tuning his guitar, wearing his red velvet jacket.

“Good lord!” Jo exclaimed. “That one’s yours?”

“Yep,” Clara said, a bit smugly.

Jo picked up another picture, one of the Doctor raising an eyebrow and smirking naughtily over a collection of jewels they’d swiped from Napoleon. “Those _eyes_! By _god_ , that is one handsome man.”

“Hey!” Clara said, grabbing the picture away jokingly. “That one’s mine. Don’t think I won’t tell your Doctor you’re ogling his other selves.”

“I wasn’t ogling, per say.” Jo said, shifting in her boots and feigning innocence. “Just having a few inappropriate thoughts.”

Clara placed her hands on her hips and did her best teacher voice. “Josephine Grant! The Brigadier would be horrified at your conduct, I must say!”

Jo giggled and walked back out to the console room. “You know Clara, after hearing everything, you know what I think?”

“What?”

“The Doctor went through all that hell so you could have this. So you could keep going, keep living. He wouldn’t want you to dwell on the past like this. He’s not that selfish.”

Clara looked down at the console. “I am.”

Jo walked over and held Clara’s hand. “I’ve seen how you are at work Clara. Why do you keep torturing yourself like this?”

“Because…” she took a deep breath. “Because being near him and being tortured is better than pretending it never happened,” Clara said, staring forlornly at her feet. “That’s why.”

Jo sighed. “Just be careful, okay?”

Clara resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “That’s what people keep telling me.”

“Alright then, I’m going to walk back to UNIT and then drive home.” Jo said. She hugged her and began to make her way out.

“Wait, Jo.” Clara said.

“Yes?”

“What you said yesterday, about how the Doctor was kinder to me when I messed up the experiment than he was to you after you first met him…”

“What about it?”

“It’s because he met you, you know,” Clara said. “You made him kinder, Jo.”

“You really think so?” Jo said.

“I _know_ so,” Clara said. “See you later!”

“Bye, Clara!”

Jo walks out the door and Clara retreats back into her sitting room to relax with a book. Without thinking, she takes another look at her shelf full of pictures. Her beloved bow-tie Doctor smiling on a submarine, her and Nina at the beach, and a candid picture she had taken once of the grey-haired Doctor, napping with a book spread out on his face after a long night of reading.

Clara smiled, and halfway through turning towards the sofa she stopped. Something was different.

Two of the pictures had changed. One of her and bow-tie with Amelia Earhart, and another of her and the eyebrows celebrating St. Patrick’s Day on Axos. Both had been replaced by other pictures of her and Nina at the beach.

“Ohmygod…” Clara whispered, running her fingertips across the frames. “It’s already happening…”

After only a couple of minutes of pondering this nervously, Clara sat down again and began to read her book.

She would still be showing up to work tomorrow. 

 

***

 

Jo was barely fifty feet away from the diner when she heard the crunch of leaves echoing behind her.

“Miss Grant,” said an all-to-familiar voice, and Jo nearly jumped at the sight of the Master approaching her.

“Stay back!” she yelled.

“Oh, no, no, don’t worry Miss Grant, I’m not up to anything dangerous today. Just had a casual, friendly question to ask.” He smiled like a predator, and Jo found herself backing away, determined not to be tricked by his deceivingly polite manner.

“I saw you leaving that diner just a minute ago, and I must say, I’m actually quite peckish. I was just wondering, is the food any good? Cheeseburgers cooked to order, that sort of thing?” he asked.

Jo raised her eyebrows. “Sorry, you just don’t strike me as the burger type, really.”

“Well you know me,” he said, smirking. “I’m full of surprises. So is the food good, or not?”

“It’s rubbish.” Jo said. “Absolute rubbish. I saw a rat running across the floor and everything. Goodbye.”

Jo began to hurry away when suddenly she felt the Master grab her arm and pull her back, and she watched as he slowly lifted his hand up towards her face, beginning to whisper, and she could feel herself fading off, becoming sleepy…growing weak…

“Now Miss Grant,” the Master said triumphantly, pleased that Jo was now completely under hypnosis. “I think its time you share with me everything you know about who lives inside that diner, wouldn’t you agree?”

 

***

 

It had been a rather dull day at work. Jo was ill; the Brigadier reported that she’d woken up yesterday afternoon feeling dizzy and confused, and needed to stay home to recover. Clara thought it sounded suspicious, but the Brigadier assured her that the flu was going around, and that it was nothing to worry about, and that Yates had brought her chicken soup and all of their good wishes earlier.

Clara had only run into the Doctor once, in the hallway, and they had exchanged friendly, awkward greetings, and he had asked her how her burn was recovering. She had assured him it was doing fine. She then spent the next hour ruminating on how she should have said or done something different.

There were countless papers to file today, and luckily, it was the kind of mindless work that could be accompanied by listening to a podcast. Clara put in some ear buds and got lost in the conversation between the hosts, who were talking about mentions of astronomy in Shakespeare plays. As the hours passed, she watched the sun outside the window fade into evening dusk.

Soon there was a knock at the door, so Clara paused the podcast to open it, finding Benton standing there with a smile.

“Hey,” Clara said, smiling back up at him. “What’s up?”

“Oh,” Benton said. “The Brig really needs those papers filed by tomorrow, so he’s wondering if you’re available to stay a bit later to get the job finished. He’ll pay you overtime, of course, but you’d need to lock the place up when you’re finished.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“What’s that on your head?” Benton asked.

Clara looked at him, dumbfounded. “Oh!” she said, pulling off her ear buds. “This? Um…it’s this new kind of headband I bought. They’re all the rage in Paris right now.”

“Huh.” Benton said. “I’ll never understand you ladies and your fashion trends. See you tomorrow, Catherine.”

“Goodnight!” Clara said, taking the keys from him.

An hour later, Clara was still hard at work filing, when she could have sworn she heard a noise coming from down the hallway. Calm and deliberate footsteps in the distance…

Curiosity got the better of her, and soon Clara found herself wandering the empty building, the hallways now only barely lit, and the clock on the wall already reading past midnight.

“Hello?” Clara said, shivering as her voice echoed down the hallway. “Is anybody there?”

Her question was answered by the eerie sensation of a leather-gloved hand placed delicately on her shoulder.

“Not to worry, Ms. Oswald. I won’t tell your beloved Doctor who you really are, as long as you follow my instructions.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As an extra treat, in case any of you guys haven't seen these pictures of Peter Capaldi and Katy Manning on the Tardis set....YOU NEED TO. It's adorable! <3 http://nerdist.com/katy-mannings-visit-to-the-doctor-who-set-is-the-cutest-thing-in-all-of-time-and-space/
> 
> Then Katy tweets: “Peter Capaldi is not only a superb actor but one of the most charming men I have ever met & oh! Those eyes.” (I based what Jo said when she's looking at pictures of the 12th doctor on this tweet, hehe)
> 
> These two are killing me with their cuteness.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally! The confrontation we've all been waiting for. :) Sorry chapters are a bit short these past couple of days, I have a really bad cold. :P

Clara jumped back and found herself looking right into the Master’s cold, grey eyes.

“How do you know?” Clara asked, slowly backing away from him. “How do know who I am?”

“It was a simple matter of hypnotizing your friend Ms. Grant. She is rather prone to hypnosis, I’ve found. Not the best decision, telling her everything, was it?” he smirked at Clara, closing in on her slowly.

“I trust Jo. I don’t trust you,” Clara said, looking up at him defiantly.

“I don’t trust you either, Ms. Oswald. Making decisions with your heart instead of your head…coming all the way back here and risking everything just to see your precious Doctor again. Tell me, what is it like to be such an utterly ridiculous woman?”

“Terrible. Glad it’s nothing you’ll ever have to experience,” Clara smiled to herself.

“Certainly not.” the Master said. “But let’s get down to business, shall we?” He opened the door to the Brigadier’s office and waited for Clara to walk in. He closed the door behind her and then circled behind the Brigadier’s desk, gleefully taking a seat in his chair.

“What do you want from me?” Clara said, taking a seat in the chair opposite from him. “Because whatever it is, you’re not going to get it.”

The Master pulled out a box containing four tiny syringes. “Oh, Ms. Oswald, I’m not so sure about that.”

“Don’t even bother explaining,” Clara said. “I’m not having anything to do with you.”

“Don’t be so hasty, Ms. Oswald. All I need you to do is get close enough to these four people to draw some tiny blood samples. Distract them a bit, go in for it, they’ll only feel a tiny pinch. I need the Brigadier, Jo, Yates, and Benton. Just return the samples to me and our business is finished.”

Clara scoffed at him. “I’m not putting my friends in danger.”

“You don’t even know what I intend to do with these samples. It could be for a very ghastly art project, for all you know. But what you do know is what I’ll be doing if you don’t cooperate.” He smiled at her pleasantly, as if they were at a weekly business meeting with coffee and pastries, and Clara found it deeply unsettling.

“You won’t tell him,” Clara said.

The Master laughed. “We both know I will.”

“Besides,” Clara said. “How do you know telling him will ruin our relationship? It might end up playing out just the same.”

“We both know that’s not quite true,” the Master said, leaning back in the Brigadier’s chair with his hands folded. “You may have already seen some of the changes occur yourself.”

Clara thought back to the changing photographs on her bookshelf and frowned.

“Good,” the Master said. “I knew you’d comply eventually.”

“I never said anything about complying.”

“But you are thinking about it, aren’t you? I’ll go ahead and give you the syringes and I’ll return at the end of the week. I will expect to find them filled. If they aren’t, I’ll walk right into that science lab over there and tell the Doctor everything.”

Clara shook her head. “He won’t believe you. You hate each other. You’re always trying to kill each other.”

The Master chuckled. “That may be true, my dear, but you must remember, we are each other’s oldest friends. We both know we cannot lie to each other.”

Clara crossed her arms angrily. “I won’t do it. I’m not going to draw blood from all my coworkers and deliver it to you. That’s insane.”

“It’s not that difficult. Just make a game out of it.”

Clara smiled. “In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. And every task you undertake, becomes a piece of cake…”

The Master raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry?”

Clara nearly snorted.

“Okay, but seriously. What are you going to do with the samples? How many people are going to get hurt?”

“That’s strictly confidential, Ms. Oswald. And that’s your risk to take.”

Clara stood up and approached the desk, firmly placing her hands on it and staring him down. “Go to hell,” she said.

“Oh my,” the Master said, raising his eyebrows in amusement. “You’re a feisty little thing, aren’t you?”

“Fuck off.”

“Language, my dear, language.”

“I’m not kidding,” Clara said. “I want you off of UNIT property right now.”

“Very well,” the Master said, getting out of his chair. “But first, let me just ask you this.”

Clara sighed. “What now?”

“Look at you. You’re so in love with him you’re willing to disintegrate your entire timeline just to see him again. Why?”

Clara smiled. “I know someone who spent 4.5 billion years punching through a Azbantium wall just to see someone again. It’s more common than you think.”

“You’re morons, the both of you,” the Master said.

“I know,” Clara said. “But I pity you. You’re never going to love someone that much. That’s an empty, cold life to live.”

“Well then,” the Master said. “I suppose we both have differing ideas of what an empty life is, don’t we?”

Clara nodded. “I guess we do.”

The Master put on his gloves and walked out the door. “Goodnight, Ms. Oswald. I’ll be back soon.”

Clara was silent as she watched him walk down the hallway and out into the night. He would be back soon enough.

She finished the last of the paper filing, placed the box of syringes under her arm, and walked back to the Tardis, making sure to lock the building up behind her.

Clara spent the rest of the evening sitting in her armchair, turning over the empty syringes in her hands, and glancing over at her shelf of pictures to see if any more of them had started changing.

She had one hell of a decision to make.


	8. Chapter 8

She had done it.

Well, the first part, anyway.

Clara sat in her office chair, tilting the four vials back and forth between her fingers. She watched the ruby-red blood slide from one side of the tubes to the other, behind the labels that were marked in black felt tip pen with four names: Lethbridge-Stewart, Grant, Yates, and Benton.

Obtaining the blood samples had been easier than she had expected. A dropped stack of papers here or an accidental tea spill there, and it was easy enough to prick all four of her targets while they had been distracted.

Some top-secret government agents they were.

Just because Clara had collected the blood samples, she decided, meant nothing about where she was leaning in terms of her decision. She just wanted to have everything ready either way, so she could put off the choice as long as she possibly could.

She could watch all of her new friends suffer under the Master’s mysterious plot, or convolute her relationship with the Doctor until it was unrecognizable.

They had torn time and space apart for each other before and it hadn’t always ended well.

Clara wondered how well she had actually learned her lesson.

 

***

 

There’s a meeting today with the officials of a nearby military base, which required a good two-thirds of the usual UNIT staff to be in attendance, and away from headquarters.

So when Clara walked in, the place had an airy spring Friday afternoon feel to it. Without the Brigadier, the remaining staff lingered around more casually, smiling at the fact that they felt free to take an extra long coffee break or sit with their feet up on the desk. Clara wasn’t quite feeling the relaxing atmosphere herself, however. She had too much to think about, and Jo wasn’t even here to help pass the time.

Clara sat down in front of her typewriter and unpacked a sandwich, a grilled cheese the diner 3D printer had popped out that morning. It would be a bit of a boring day, she supposed. She figured the Doctor wouldn’t even be coming in, as he seemed too important to leave behind for such a meeting.

She was soon proved wrong by a knock on the door. “Ms. Morland? Ms. Morland, may I come in?”

“Of course,” Clara said, as casually as she could muster, and sat up determinedly in her chair.

The Doctor opened the wooden door, devilishly handsome in a blue ruffled shirt and a dark green velvet jacket. “I was wondering if you could assist me with something. I promise you it’ll be more exciting than whatever paperwork the Brigadier has you doing.”

“Yes!” Clara exclaimed, embarrassed at how quickly she had leapt out of her chair. “I’d be happy to help.”

“Excellent,” the Doctor said, holding the door for her as she walked out into the hall. “Although, I hope you aren’t too easily shocked. Some parts of this mission I have for us may surprise you.”

“I’ve seen more than you think,” Clara said, smiling at him as if offering a challenge. He glanced back at her curiously, ever the more determined to uncover her secrets.

“I figured as much,” the Doctor said, leading them into the laboratory. He pulled out a cardboard box from underneath a table. “Now this, Ms. Morland,” he grinned, removing dozens of baseball-sized pink crystals from it, “Is our mission for today.”

“Will we be performing tests on them?” Clara enquired, leaning up against the lab table.

“No,” the Doctor said. “We need to return these to where they came from.”

Clara’s eyes widened. _He didn’t mean…?_

“Now Catherine,” the Doctor said. “We’re just going to step inside my police box for a moment, alright?”

Clara nodded and gripped her hands together.

_Same old, same old. The Doctor and Clara Oswald in the Tardis._

The Doctor pushed in the door to the Tardis and walked in, heading straight for the console and already pressing buttons, watching her carefully out of the corner of his eye.

Clara walked in slowly after him, and simply rested her hands on the railing, taking it all in. It felt the same, somehow. It looked different; of course, with the white roundels and mint green console, a simpler model like her and Ashildr’s, but the soul of the ship around her felt the same. It still felt like an old friend.

She closed her eyes and ghosted her fingers over the railing again, feeling the ship vibrate in reply against her fingers.

 _She knows who I am,_ Clara thought. _She knows what I’m doing; she knows why I’m here._

“By god!” the Doctor exclaimed, interrupting Clara’s train of thought and making her jump. “That’s a first.”

“Sorry?”

“You really have nothing to say?”

It took Clara a minute to grasp his meaning. It turns out you really can get used to anything after awhile, even relative dimensions.

“Oh!” Clara said, smacking herself in the head playfully. “Sorry, didn’t get much sleep last night, hardly noticed. Yeah, so how exactly do you get this whole room in a police box?”

The Doctor looked down at her curiously. “I’ll explain later. We’ve got work to do.” He picked up the box of pink crystals, flipped some levers, and opened the doors, stepping out onto a beach. Clara followed.

They were standing on a beach, obviously on some alien planet, with a deep purple sky and aquamarine water. The sand wasn’t too different from that found on earth, with the exception that it was covered with tiny rocks that looked precisely like glass marbles a child would own on earth, and they glittered in small piles on the sand. Tall, grey cliffs stood solemnly in the distance, looking out over the scenery as if they were age-old guardians of the sand and water.

“It’s beautiful,” Clara said, staring up at the purple sky, until she noticed that the Doctor was staring at her like she was a bomb about to go off.

She then realized her mistake.

“Ohmygod, wait, how exactly did we get here? Where are we?”

The Doctor only stared at her incredulously.

“Bit of a late reaction, Ms. Morland.”

“Excuse me?”

“You didn’t seem exactly shocked thirty seconds ago as to how exactly we ended up out of the UNIT laboratory.”

Clara swallowed. “I was just admiring the beach, that’s all. So how did we get here?”

The Doctor refused to answer. He simply stared into Clara’s eyes as if he were trying to see past them, and he approached her slowly until they were face to face.

Clara froze, terrified.

“I know what you are,” the Doctor whispered. “Let’s see if I’m right.”

Clara watched as the Doctor rested his hand upon the center of her chest, and winced the moment she saw the disbelief register in his eyes.

“I thought I would find two heartbeats, but there’s not even…there’s not…”

He rested two fingers at the side of her neck and Clara shivered at the contact.

“What are you, Catherine?” he asked, looking at her pleadingly. “How do you walk and live and know things ordinary humans don’t without a pulse running through your veins? It doesn’t make any sense!”

Clara turned away, and it broke her heart to do so.

“We all have our secrets, Doctor,” she said, staring out achingly at the ocean.

He looked so desperate for answers that it killed her.

“Never mind all this,” Clara said, collecting herself. “We have work to do here, remember?”

The Doctor sighed. “Quite right.” He picked up the box and took off towards the cliffs at the edge of the beach. Clara had an uncomfortable feeling, however, that their discussion was not quite over.

“These crystals,” the Doctor began to explain, “Are vital to supporting the fragile ecosystem here on Ro-dhéidhealachd. Take a lot of them away for too long and all the plant and animal life here could collapse, as they all gain energy from the crystals, like plants on earth do from the sun. I found these in the possession of a pirate on Stricium, and I am now returning them to only twenty minutes after they were stolen, to ensure that little harm befalls the planet’s delicate environment.”

“That box travels in time, too?” Clara asked, doing her best to feign disbelief.

The Doctor shot Clara a glare that told her she needed to work on her acting.

As they approached the cliffs Clara began to see the opening of a small cave in the shadows, with a faint pink glowing coming from within.

“This is it,” the Doctor said, crouching down to enter the cave. Clara, of course, was short enough that she could stroll through it without a thought.

The cave sparkled all over from the warm glow emanating from the pink crystals, making Clara feel as if she were in a fairy tale. She noticed a bare spot toward the back of the cave and saw the Doctor heading towards it.

“This is why I brought you,” the Doctor explained, beginning to unpack the crystals from the box. “I need you to watch the ceiling and spot me in case any crystals come loose and threaten to hit my head while I’m putting these back. Getting hit on the head with one of these could be nasty...deadly, even.”

Clara smirked and watched the ceiling as the Doctor began to put the crystals back. “Liar,” she said under her breath.

“Excuse me?”

“You could have easily used some machine to spot you, or had a much better time with Jo doing this when she gets back later. You did this because you were curious about me.”

The Doctor smiled sheepishly. “So what if I am?”

Their eyes locked for a moment, one that felt to Clara almost like their old and familiar friendship, when they were interrupted by a crystal falling directly towards the Doctor’s head.

Clara caught it with one hand.

“Good catch,” the Doctor said. “At least now I know you’re not out to kill me, at least.”

“Sorry?”

“If you were, you could have let that crystal fall and I’d have been a goner.”

Clara shrugged and the Doctor laughed, continuing to fit the pink crystals back into their proper places while Clara kept watch over the ceiling of the cave.

“All finished,” the Doctor said proudly, admiring the once again complete crystal cave. “The Ro-dhéidhealachd ecosystem is stable once again.”

Clara smiled. The Doctor, always thinking himself the dashing hero.

At least, he did before Gallifrey fell.

The Doctor and Clara began the walk down the beach and back to the Tardis, and Clara smiled at the violet sky, dotted with diamond stars. It truly was marvelous.

Clara tried to hide her gasp of surprise when the Doctor linked his arm around hers as they walked.

“You know, Ms. Morland,” he said happily, “For a girl without a pulse who hides a lot of secrets, I still think of you as a very charming and attractive person.”

Clara got caught up in his smile and blushed warmly, thankful that the dark purple sky was hiding her cheeks.

“You’re quite charming yourself,” Clara said, smiling back, and the Doctor beamed.

Were they _flirting?_ Clara smirked. Her Doctor hadn’t been much of a flirt. Maybe this one was just trying to charm her into giving up information. She wasn’t that easy.

They reached the Tardis, and materialized back to the UNIT laboratory, where Clara began to gather her things to go back to her office across the hall.

The Doctor stared at her, smiling resignedly. “Will you ever tell me what your real name is, Ms. Catherine Morland?”

Clara laughed. “I don’t think so, Doctor. Not until you tell me yours.”

“John Smith.”

Clara smiled. “Sure it is.”

The Doctor took a few steps closer and took her hand warmly in his, caressing it gently and deliberately between his fingers. Clara felt a warmth return to her that had been missing for ages. He was looking at her as his eleventh self would one day, like she was a beautiful and complex puzzle he could never hope to solve. That he wanted to figure out more than anything. That he was afraid of discovering the truth about.

“Why do you insist on being so impossible?” he asked.

Clara took a deep breath and turned around sharply, beginning to make her way out of the room before her emotions got the better of her again, but she stopped in the doorway for a moment, deciding to answer his question.

“Because I’m the impossible girl,” she said, smiling at him, and walked across the hall, leaving him as mystified as ever.


	9. Chapter 9

Clara was reminiscing about an autumn day, long ago, that had seared itself onto her mind. She had walked into the Tardis after a date with Danny, and found the Doctor sitting hunched over on the floor, gently strumming the chords to “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” and singing softly under his breath. It was beautiful and bittersweet, and Clara knew, somewhere deep inside, buried beneath all of her doubts, that it was for her.

When the Doctor finally noticed she was standing in front of him, he had looked up, and their eyes had locked, as they silently acknowledged the unspeakable truth. Clara could remember the feeling of her breath catching in her throat, the feeling of almost saying it, but she had backed away in fear. She had changed the subject and pretended she hadn’t caught on. But they both knew what had happened. That weight on both of their shoulders that felt so forbidden and so good, until one day, of course, it wouldn’t.

This was the last thing Clara had been thinking about before she fell asleep, tumbling into a strange and beautiful dream.

***

Clara woke up on the floor of her console room, disoriented and confused, the lights dimmed so shadows filled the walls. She could hear the familiar chords of The Beatles being played behind her, and she whipped her head around, staring up in complete bewilderment. The Doctor.

_Her_ Doctor _._

“You…” Clara said under her breath. “…How?”

The Doctor laughed, and Clara nearly sighed at the sight of his smile. “Not really. Don’t be silly. See how everything’s a bit blurry and you’re not quite thinking straight? You’re asleep. I’m just a dream talking to you. A dream helping you make the right choice.”

“The right choice?” Clara asked.

“Well,” the Doctor said, putting down his guitar. “In case you’ve forgotten, you’re having this funky little dream sequence, probably, because you downed three glasses of wine. You did this because you went on a lovely little beach walk with the ruffled shirt me, and then remembered that the Master is coming back tomorrow to collect the blood samples from you.”

“The Master?” Clara said foggily, standing up.

“Yes, the Master. Lovely and strangely charming mix of Mary Poppins and Satan. Well, the one you’re dealing with is just Satan, I suppose.”

Clara stood up on wobbly legs and finally began to take in her surroundings. She couldn’t stop staring at him. How natural he looked, how casual it all was.

Somewhere she knew, back in the realm of reality, that he wasn’t real.

“He’s always been rubbish with birthday presents, by the way. I got him Clangers on DVD and I didn’t even get a thank you note! You would think that- ”

The Doctor stopped suddenly as Clara approached him and put her hand against his cheek, feeling the lines of his soft smile under her fingers.

“I miss you,” Clara whispered, her eyes watering up. “I miss being with you. I can’t bear it anymore.”

“I know,” he said, holding her against him, and Clara sighed at the feeling of soft red velvet against her cheek.

“Clara,” he sighed. “You know why I’m here. You know what I need to tell you.”

“No.” Clara said, holding him tighter. “Please, Doctor, I don’t want to. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t _care._ ”

“Clara, if you give the Master those blood samples innocent people will die.”

Clara looked up at him nervously. “What if we don’t meet each other the way we’re supposed to? What if we don’t fall in love? What then?”

The Doctor brushed her hair behind her ear and tilted her chin up to face him. “Then we don’t. But there’s innocent people in 1972 that have people they love too, Clara.”

“Not like us.”

“ _Just_ like us.”

Clara laughed. “You don’t really believe that, do you?” 

The Doctor broke out into a grin. “Not for a second.”

They beamed at each other.

“You told me to be a Doctor once,” he said. “Now it’s your turn.”

“You want me to be a Doctor?”

The Doctor laughed. “No. That’s rubbish. I want you to be a _Clara_.”

Clara sighed. “But I-”

“Those people at UNIT are my friends. And now they’re your friends too. You need to look out for them. You have a- ”

“I have a duty of care.”

The Doctor smiled at her sadly. “That’s right. Tomorrow when you get to work, you need to get those blood samples out of your desk drawer and dump them out. You need to do this, Clara.”

“If I do this tomorrow, will you answer a question for me?”

The Doctor smiled. “Anything.”

Clara sighed and gripped her hands together anxiously. “What you told me in the Cloisters, Doctor. I believe you, but I still…I just don’t understand.”

The Doctor looked at her incredulously. “Don’t understand what?”

Clara looked down at her feet. “You’re a two thousand year old timelord, and I’m just a school teacher from Blackpool. How could you ever-”

The Doctor interrupted her by placing his hands on her waist and pulling her tight against him for the most passionate kiss she had ever had, in dreams or reality. As his lips moved against hers and she tangled her fingertips in his silver curls, Clara felt him softly press his fingertips to her forehead. She let him enter her mind, sending her a telepathic signal that was more than a simple message, it was a collage of memories and feelings; all piled up on top of each other, swirling rainbow colors of bursting emotion of every kind.

Clara saw snow and red dresses; Dalek puppets and a crashed spaceship, Victorian lace and hansom cabs. She saw him chasing her across time, desperate to find her and already so enchanted. Clara saw her from his eyes, as he lay dying on the floor of his Tardis, watching her sacrifice herself for him. She saw him sketching portraits of her different smiles as he aged on Trenzalore, and the fear in his heart as he started a new regeneration cycle. Clara watched memories of their new adventures, as his admiration tumbled out of control into a passion and attachment so strong it terrified him. She watched him hide and bury it as she ran out on dates with Danny Pink and as they stood motionless in a hallway on the Orient Express. She saw…

***

“Clara! _Clara?”_

“Hm?” Clara asked, rolling over and brushing the hair out of her face. That _dream._ She felt a little foggy, but in a good way, she could still feel the passion behind that extraordinary kiss running through her veins, the warmth of the-

“It’s 9:30, Clara, you were supposed to be at work an hour ago.” Ashildr said.

“Well then take the Tardis back an hour.”

“I can’t,” Ashildr said. “The experiment I’m running in the garden room? With the large hadron collider? I can’t have time travel messing it up.”

“Oh, _shit_.” Clara said. “You’re right, sorry. I’ll just rush on over.”

Ashildr left, still a bit annoyed at having to serve as Clara’s alarm clock, and Clara began quickly sifting through her clothes trying to find something suitable to wear. She put on a nice blazer and skirt and rushed out the door, grabbing two 32nd century food capsules on the way out.

She would get to work, dump the blood samples down the sink, and then the Master would show up. He would tell the Doctor. And she would have to live with the consequences.

But she was running an hour late.

_What if he was already there?_


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I know, I have not updated in FOREVER, because of life, etc, but I promise I am really and truly finishing this time! In honor of series 10, I'll be posting the last two chapters in conjunction with the first two episodes. 
> 
> Here's Chapter 10 to enjoy along with "The Pilot" today, and next Saturday will be the finale of the story when "Smile" airs.
> 
> Happy Doctor Who time everyone!
> 
> (and sorry for taking so long!)

When UNIT HQ finally comes into view, its walls greyish-purple in the morning light, Clara is sprinting as fast as her legs can take her. _Please_ , Clara thinks to herself. _Please don’t let it be too late._

She nearly collapses against the door and jams her key in, missing the hole twice out of sheer panic and still recovering from the run. Her breath is coming in deep and fast heaves and she feels her throat drying up, her heart, had it still the ability to beat, would be a toy soldier drumming too fast across a floorboard. The door swings open and Clara runs in, sprinting down the hallway until she finds her office. She pushes down the door, eyes wide.

She gives a sweet sigh of relief. It’s empty. Silent.

“Oh,” Clara sighs, sliding against the door with exhaustion. She walks over to the desk and pulls the case of blood vials out of the drawer, untouched and safe. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she says, smiling excitedly. She would dump them down the sink and get the hell out. Mission accomplished.

“You are very welcome, Clara Oswald.”

Clara feels herself freeze in place, and can only watch in horror as the large leather chair in the corner of the room turns around slowly. She is staring at the Master, and he is looking smug, satisfied, and unsettlingly victorious.

Frantically, Clara starts to pop the cork off one of the vials to pour it down the sink, but she feels herself stop. She is suddenly frozen, her bones locked into place. Her head hangs to the side like a ragdoll, her eyes following the Master’s hands. Wherever she is, she is far away from herself. All of her free will and strength feels just out of reach, as if it is being dangled seductively above her head on a string.

“A simple matter of hypnosis, Ms. Oswald,” The Master says, leering at her. “Even with the most stubborn of humans, it is laughably easy to get them to submit to my will.”

Clara watches helplessly as the Master sits on top of her desk, languishing in his superiority. She cannot even move her face to scowl at him. He takes the vials from her and fingers the glass, smiling like a child who just earned a new toy by throwing a tantrum.

“Now for you, my dear,” The Master says, stroking her cheek with a cold leather hand. Somewhere deep down in Clara’s mind, she is repulsed. “There is only waiting. With these blood samples my Auton replicants will come alive. UNIT, and therefore the Earth’s military, will be under my control. Total war will break loose. I will rise to lead amongst the chaos. And you…you will be a victim, just like all the rest of the ordinary citizens of Earth, 1972. The impossible girl will be…” he paused and smiled. “Very possible, indeed.”

He pauses, waiting for Clara’s fear to sink in, watching her with the sort of affectionate, pitying distance that a scientist gives a lab mouse.

“But that’s not even the best part, is it?” The Master says excitedly, looking extremely pleased and like he is trying to resist waving his hands. “I know what you’re thinking. What could be worse for Clara Oswald than the total destruction of her home planet a la World War Three? Hmmm…are you thinking? Brainstorming? Any ideas yet?”

Even in Clara’s frozen and hypnotized body, the Master watches diligently as her eyes seem to widen with terror.

“Oh my, she’s got it, hasn’t she!”

Clara wants to scream, she wants to attack him, but when she tries to wedge her mouth open her lips just quiver there motionless. _No, no, no, no…_

“Oops. I’ve told him already. He knows who you are. What you will be to him. What happens now? Who knows? One thing I do know is that he cannot foster any kind of affection for you now that he has the whole story in his hands. There’s no mystery of the impossible girl to catch his intrigue, to zip around that curious and mercurial mind of his. Oh…and all those paradoxes that could occur! Isn’t it just a _thrilling_ prospect?”

Clara’s eyes watch him accusingly. _We had a deal_.

The Master sees the anger behind her eyes and laughs. “Oh my dear, dear Clara Oswald…nobody ever said I played fair.”

Clara feels a tear of frustration running down her face, and she watches the Master gaze at it adoringly as if it was a lone daisy on a country road. She would ruin her entire history with the Doctor and had completely compromised the safety of her friends and her planet to boot.

“There’s no way he can fall in love with you now. And yes, I know what existed between the two of you. He’s my oldest friend; I’ve done my research. He allows himself to be foolishly affected and persuaded by the lowly likes of you. But not anymore. No one can fall in love under that kind of pressure. No one would knowing what your tragic end will be. A pitying and awkward friendship is all you’ll get, if you’re lucky. You know how he avoids such heartbreak.”

Clara’s mind thinks back to a simpler time, to an adventure with the Zygons, to the sudden realization that she was being held prisoner inside her own mind. If she had done this once, she could do it again.

And so Clara then thought, and more importantly, she felt.

The Master had broken the most precious thing to her, ripped it away, not even for his own gain, but out of cruelty, and a hint of jealousy, perhaps. The grief and the rage tore through her, the deathly current of the blood that beats through a newly grieving heart.

Clara looked up to the two swords hanging decoratively on the wall, focused. _Get out, Clara_.

_Think your way out. Take back control._

_Come on. You can do this. You have to do this._

A few minutes later, Clara felt her mind beginning to emerge from its prison, used every bit of willpower she had, and-

…Her muscles relaxed and became her own again, and she watched the Master staring absentmindedly out the window.

He turned around in shock to find Clara Oswald holding a fencing sword to his throat.

Clara stared him down, her eyes dark with fury. “You may have ruined me and the Doctor,” she said, holding back tears. “But you will not touch this earth. You will not harm us. Not while I’m here. And especially not when I’m this heartbroken. I won’t let you get away with it.”

The Master easily shoved Clara down and lunged to the side, reaching up to grab the other sword on the wall before Clara could stop him.

Clara dashed out into the open hallway and he followed, sword at the ready.

“You’re kidding yourself if you think you can beat a swordsman with my training.” The Master said, clutching the case of vials tight to his side, approaching her one deadly footstep at a time.

“Please,” Clara said, doing her best to collect herself. “I could beat you with a spoon.”

The Master had underestimated Clara’s swordsmanship, and was surprised at the strength and agility the tiny woman before him exhibited as she clashed her sword against his with the cleverness of someone who had clearly known battle. The Master had backed Clara all the way into the corner of the other end of the hallway until he had her backed up against a bookcase, and thrust his sword forward.

“Ha!” Clara ducked and spun behind him at the last possible second, leaving the Master staring confoundedly at his sword, which had a military manual now stuck in the end of it.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Clara said with a mischievous smirk. “That’s government property.”

The Master no longer could control his rage and annoyance with Clara’s flippant behavior towards him, and chased her back down the end of the hallway, where Clara ducked quickly into the Doctor’s laboratory.

Clara took a deep breath and lifted her sword as she met eyes with the Master, determined to take back the blood vials if it was the last thing she ever did.

She lunged at him again, desperate to knock the case of vials out from under his arm, but it was beginning to seem like no use. He was defending her every attack with expert precision, and Clara was beginning to think she wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer. She continued to swing her sword with every bit of her remaining strength, sweat gathering on her brow and panic in her heart.

The Master had her backed up against the laboratory table. She was cornered.

Clara stared down in terror at the end of the sword, which the Master had let rest daintily over her silent heart.

“All this running my dear,” the Master whispered, smiling as he pushed the sword through a layer of her blouse. “…And someone’s finally got you pinned down…”

Clara looked over at her left hand, which was right next to the beaker of the scarlet liquid from the Silurian caves that had burned her hand all those weeks ago. She sighed and gave herself a moment of relief in the bittersweet memory, the Doctor caressing her hand as he bandaged it.

_Because I have a duty of care…_

She did too. For Jo, the Brig, Benton, Yates…the whole planet spinning under her feet.

Clara grabbed the beaker of acid and kicked the Master away from her as she splashed the bright red liquid of the case of vials.

“No!” The Master yelled. “No!”

Clara stepped back as she watched the glass tubes and their contents dissolve and meld together into a bubbling, gummy mass on the floor of the laboratory. The Master began to moan in anguish at the acid beginning to burn through his clothes.

“How dare you!” he screamed, and jumped back at the sound of the door being pushed open.

“What in the blazes is going on in here?” said the Brigadier, bursting in suddenly and holding his shotgun up. He quickly assessed the chaos before him, the broken glass of test tubes and beakers lying amidst two dropped swords. “Are you alright, Miss Morland? You’re damned lucky I came in early this morning. I’m not sure you know what our old friend here is capable of.”

“Not to worry sir,” Clara said, “I handled it.”

The Brigadier nodded and looked over at the Master, who was still doubled over in pain. “I can see that,” the Brigadier said, looking pleasantly surprised.

Another pair of footsteps was already echoing from down the hall.

“Good morning,” the Doctor said, looking more tired than usual but still resplendent in red velvet. “I see I’ve missed something.”

“I only just got here,” the Brigadier said. “Clearly Miss Morland here is a force to be reckoned with.”

“She certainly is,” the Doctor said, meeting eyes with Clara for a moment. “And I’m afraid you’ll only ever know the beginning of it, my dear chap.”

The Brigadier raised an eyebrow and then looked over at the Master. Clara looked down at the floor.

“Could you deal with him? I have some urgent business with Miss Morland, I’m afraid.”

“Yes, of course,” The Brigadier said, putting the Master into a pair of handcuffs and dragging him out of the lab.

“Goodbye, Miss Morland _,”_ the Master said, smirking at her knowingly as the Brigadier pulled him along. _Not so victorious now, are we?_

She listened until their footsteps and voices were gone, and she looked back down at her feet, terrified to move, of what would come next.

“ _Clara_ …” came the Doctor’s trembling voice behind her.

And then they were alone.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the finale! Thanks so much for sticking with this story, and hope you enjoy how it wraps up!

Clara turned around.

“Hello, Doctor,” she whispered, and it was an offering of peace, a plea for forgiveness…a confession of love.

The Doctor looked down and began to fiddle with his shirt cuff.

“No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be a heroine,” the Doctor quoted, suddenly breaking his silence to look up at Clara.

“You know your Austen,” Clara said, smiling. “...but I already knew that.” Her smile quickly faded.

“It’s funny,” the Doctor observed, pacing around one of the lab tables. “One tends to suppose that choosing an alias is a rather arbitrary business, but they can be a sort of window to the mind, don’t you think?”

“Hm,” Clara wondered aloud. “John Smith….”

“What would you say about that one?”

Clara smiled. “A desire to be the everyman, to be forgettable…to have all the responsibility lifted from your shoulders.”

“Good,” the Doctor said, gripping to table before him. “And do you know what I think of yours?”

Clara stiffened under the depth of his gaze, suddenly silent.

“Catherine Morland, in the novel, is a woman of great stretches of the imagination. She makes everyone out as better or worse than they actually are. She’s paranoid and sees ghosts behind every corner and imagines romances in every tiny glance.” The Doctor laughed. “But it’s not yourself you were thinking of when you chose that name, of course.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was me.”

The Doctor approached Clara with slow and steady steps, and she froze.

“As much as you pretended to care about practicality, about concealing your identity and avoiding me, that’s not what you really wanted, of course. That’s not what drove you here. You would have needed me to be a bit of a Catherine Morland, a real romantic with incredible leaps of faith and feats of imagination to see you…to truly see you for who you were. Isn’t that correct?”

Clara was looking down, eyes dark and accusatory. “Why are you carrying on this conversation as if it were an interrogation?”

The Doctor smirked with amusement. “It’s not?”

Clara tried to keep herself from screaming as she balled her hands into fists. “Why are you still treating me like you don’t know who I am?” she cried. “How can you still treat me so callously after all you’ve just heard?”

“That’s just it, my dear,” the Doctor said with total calm, pretending to fiddle with some equipment. “I just heard a story. A story that hasn’t happened yet.” He turned towards Clara. “I still don’t really know you at all.”

Clara shook her head, tears falling. “And now I guess you never will, will you?”

“The good news is that I have that part all fixed,” the Doctor said. “Using this device, I can take your bioscan and wipe yourself specifically from the memories of everyone within a five-mile radius after you fly off in your Tardis. Me, the Master, the Brigadier, Jo, everyone. History will play out as it should.”

Clara only cried harder.

The Doctor looked panicked and approached her slowly. “That’s good though, isn’t it Clara? Everything will-”

Clara hugged the Doctor as tight as she could and sobbed, and only sobbed harder when she felt the bittersweet sensation of warm velvet under her fingertips.

The Doctor looked down at the tiny woman crying in his arms and suddenly everything fell into place, and his hearts sped up; a double drumbeat against the empty silence of hers. The story, when the Master told it to him, had seemed absurd. It was magical and impossible and full of the kinds of love and devotion that he didn’t know he would ever be capable of feeling. Even though he knew it was true, he didn’t quite believe it. He hadn’t processed it as a real, tangible part of the lives stretched out in front of him.

But then he stroked the soft brown hair of this strange and wonderful girl as she cried in his arms, and saw the depth of the grief in her eyes as she looked up at him, and he knew. Those big, sad eyes of hers. He knew.

He would fall desperately and tragically in love with her.

Had he already?

“I’m sorry…” the Doctor whispered. “For everything I can’t understand yet, I-“

Clara didn’t seem to hear him. “I _can’t…”_ she cried into the lapel of his jacket.

“You can’t what?” the Doctor asked, cradling her head so she met his eyes.

“I can’t watch you forget me again.”

The Doctor held her tighter as she cried more, and they stayed like that for a while, neither one of them wanting to be the first to let go.

“I taught this story to my students once,” Clara said, breaking the silence. “All Summer in a Day,” by Ray Bradbury. Did you ever read it?”

“Yes,” the Doctor said. “It’s about a planet where the sun only comes out once every seven years. And there’s a little girl.”

Clara smiles briefly at his recognition and continues telling the story. “And this little girl loves the sun more than anything, but she’s never seen it. And on the day the sun comes back, the other children lock her in the closet until it’s gone. She wanted to see it more than any of them, and then those cruel, awful children took it away from her.” Pain seeped through Clara’s voice, and she shuddered.

The Doctor sighed. “I hate that story.”

“That’s who I feel like though…the little girl,” Clara said as she faced the Doctor again, nearly stumbling over her words. “You were my sun, Doctor. I centered my life around you. I loved you more than anything. And being here at UNIT, seeing all these people. These people who get to see you every day and don’t even notice. But me? I’m locked out. I’m trapped…and I can never see you again.” Fury was growing in her eyes.

“No, Clara.” the Doctor said, cradling her cheek with his hand once again. “You shouldn’t make someone the center of your universe, or your energy source. Especially not someone who is gone, and especially not a woman as brilliant as you. You’re not the little girl in the story Clara; you’re not trapped in a closet, far from it. You have a Tardis, you have the universe just waiting for you.”

Clara shook her head. “I know, but-”

“ _Your_ Doctor, well, I don’t exactly know him, but if he’s anything like me, I’m sure he wouldn’t want you to be kept from adventure by your memory of him. He would want his memory of him to inspire you, hm?” The Doctor smiled.

A quick laugh escaped Clara as she looked up at the Doctor before her-his mass of grey curls and his red velvet jacket, the mischievous twinkle in his eyes, and for the first time in weeks, Clara really and truly beamed.

“You’re a lot like him, you know,” Clara said. “You _are_ him, and I’ve loved knowing you, and…” she stuttered. “I’m going to miss you, Doctor.”

The Doctor smiled. “I’m going to miss knowing you, Clara Oswald.”

Clara smiled playfully. “Oh, I think you’ll be seeing me again. One day. You have all that left to come.”

“And will you be seeing me?”

Clara’s eyes sunk down. “I’m afraid not.”

“Yes, I, um-” the Doctor picked up the memory device. “I should give you a head start to get to your Tardis, and then I suppose I’ll turn this on.”

“I just wish-”

The Doctor sighed. “I know, but it’s the only way.”

Clara looked towards the door, trying to compress all of the tumultuous emotions catapulting through her into a simple goodbye, into only a few short words.

The Doctor took her hand in both of his and kissed it tenderly, and Clara was suddenly transported back to the day of her impending death, to another bittersweet and final goodbye that had broken her.

She looked into this Doctor’s eyes as he kissed her hand and she knew. It was him. Somewhere, yet to come, he was there.

“Doctor,” Clara said, her eyes brimming with tears. “I know you don’t quite understand this yet, or feel this yet, but-”

The Doctor smiled. “I love you too, Clara Oswald.” He kissed her forehead. “Time is no linear thing, you see, so I am him, and one proud day my dear, I will,” he blushed and kissed her hand again. “And you have no idea how much I look forward to it.”

Clara gave his hand one last squeeze and let her eyes linger on him for a moment longer, remembering, savoring this last look at him.

_Let me be brave_

Clara turned around and walked out the door.

 

**EPILOGUE**

 

Jo has come to regret her choice. Marrying Cliff Jones had seemed appealing at first, and assisting him in his research had seemed exciting, but after five years in the Amazon, she has become absolutely miserable. She’s bored of Cliff, tired of his pedantry and childish antics, and sick of the endless jungle rain. She misses UNIT and her travels in the Tardis. She is already dying for a way out, and her minds plays with ideas of divorce, of taking a plane to another continent…

“I’m going for a walk!” Jo yells at Cliff, who is completely absorbed in a pile of charts. He mumbles acknowledgment as Jo treks out into the jungle in her old go-go boots, which are now irrevocably stained with mud.

Jo has taken this same walk through the middle of the wilderness hundreds of times, which winds through the jungle to a quiet place by the river about a mile away, but when she gets there, she sees the inexplicable:

Someone has built a restaurant on the side of the river.

Jo laughs at the sight of it, more excited than puzzled. It’s been ages since she’s seen something so impossible.

She tiptoes over to the door to crack it open and is surprised to find a very ordinary-looking American style diner inside. Jo is even more surprised to see people in the booths. There is a small dark haired girl organizing what look like large and ancient diaries in one booth, and in the one adjacent to it are…well if she didn’t know any better, it looked like Virginia Woolf and Frida Kahlo playing Monopoly.

Jo is so astounded by this strange trio of women that she doesn’t see a fourth come barreling through one of the back doors. “Jo! Jo Grant!” exclaims a tiny and very pretty brunette woman in a waitress uniform. “I can’t believe it, it’s been what, ninety years?”

Jo stares at her blankly. “I…I..”

“Oh, of course, the memory wipe. Silly me. I’ll explain. I’m Clara, by the way.”

Jo is still dumbstruck as she watches Clara waltz around the diner, refilling the salt shakers. She feels a familiar sensation overwhelm her, one she hasn’t felt in years. She is confused and confounded and overjoyed to the point where she can hardly keep up with her own thoughts, she can hardly breathe.

_Wonder._

But even her former acquaintance with the feeling could not prepare her for when Clara grabs her by the hand and pulls her back into a gleaming white console room.

“It’s a…Tardis.” Jo says, eyes wide, as Clara beams at her.

“Yes,” Clara says, flicking an array of switches on the console. “And it’s mine.”

Jo is smiling wider than she has in years, and Clara runs up to her and grabs her hands, childlike excitement emanating from her eyes.

“I know you have no reason to believe me yet, but we’re old friends, and you look miserable, and there’s a whole universe out there. Take a chance on me, Jo, right now, just believe me and say yes.”

Jo looks into Clara’s eyes, is pulled into the stardust and daring sparking within them, and shrugs without a thought. “Yes.”

She smiles at this new, supposedly old, friend, full of energy and adventure, as Clara begins to excitedly program the ship.

Clara squeezes her hand, and Jo has a good feeling she won’t be coming back.

The ship comes to life, and Jo feels her heart race as the rotor moves up and down, ready to propel them anywhere and everywhere.

Jo is too dumbstruck to notice Clara wander off to the opposite wall of the console room, where she looks at a tiny, framed photograph and caresses it with her fingertips.

It’s a photo of a different console room, from Clara’s youth and her innocence, one full of old books and glowing blue and orange lights. In it stands a man, and he smiles out of the frame at her, and at Jo farther back, and Clara knows, wherever he is right now, he would be proud.

She had loved him, and loves him still, but the love is different now. It is tucked away, still as strong and beautiful as ever, but safe. What had once been a live rose that sometimes cut her with its thorns was now a flower pressed for posterity between the pages of a book.

And throughout her life, he would always be her favorite page, and they would always be her favorite story.

Clara turns around as she feels the ship land, and finds a hand to hold.

She snaps her fingers, the doors creak open, and the universe awaits.

“Come on, Jo,” Clara says. “We’ve got work to do.”


End file.
